oh the hypocrisy

The media should be all over the hypocrisy expressed by NBN in this statement and absolutely givien it to the LNP. I would have thought that The Register would have jumped on this, or at least commented on it. None of the media outlets seem to have jumped on it either.

Copyright is government attempting to control markets

"Which is lovely, save for the fact that it is an attempt to control markets."

So it's okay for a private enterprise to attempt to control and regulate a market, but not for a government to regulate a market to ensure free trade by removing artificial restrictions such as geoblocking?

Copyright is government regulation designed to control markets. Copyright is not a natural right, it is a monopoly right assigned by government regulation. Removing government control of the market would mean removing copyright.

If you think the NBN is only about media streaming you don't understand the NBN

The NBN isn't about being able to stream 4K content or playing the latest VR games, it is about upgrading Australia's dilapidated and obsolete telecommunications infrastructure to handle the demands and requirements of the 21st century and beyond. It is about enabling large volumes of information and knowledge to move rapidly across Australia to allow collaboration. 4K media content is just a very small subset of that data. The author's use of a 4K TV offers an easily understandable example of how the MTM NBN is already obsolete before it's even built, let alone any of the other more advance service that will run over it in the near future.

While the NBN is primarily a telecommunications infrastructure project, a significant portion of the cost is civil works (conduits, pits and cables), and therefore it is also one of the largest civil infrastructure projects undertaken in Australia. Yes, while telecommunications infrastructure maybe design for capacity to a shorter timeframe, civil infrastructure is always design with a far longer timeframe in mind, often 20 to 40 years into the future, or longer if it is going to be difficult and costly to come back and do it again. You don't want to be coming back to put in new ducts, cables and pits in 10 years time and have all the expenses of traffic control, community and stakeholder management, environmental approvals, etc incurred all over again. These overheads are a very significant part of any civil infrastructure project. From a civil works perspective, running fibre to the home now makes sense.